Volkswagen's Electric ID R Race Car Shatters Goodwood Hill Climb Record
Volkswagen's all-electric ID R race car breaks a 20-year-old record at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, achieving the feat twice in a single weekend.
Volkswagen’s ID R electric race car breaks a 20-year-old record at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, achieving the feat twice in a single weekend. Driver Romain Dumas completes the 1.86-kilometer hill climb in 41.18 seconds on the first day and improves to 39.90 seconds the next day. This performance easily surpasses the previous record of 41.6 seconds set by Nick Heidfeld in a combustion-engine McLaren-Mercedes in 1999.
The ID R serves as a powerful showcase for Volkswagen’s upcoming ID production line, which includes the ID.3 hatchback. The race car operates as a moving testbed for the automaker’s Modular Electric Drive Toolkit, or MEB, a flexible matrix of parts designed to make electric vehicle production more efficient and cost-effective. To conquer the specific demands of the Goodwood sprint, engineers outfit the vehicle with a smaller battery to reduce weight and optimize the power output.
This recent victory at Goodwood adds to a growing list of achievements for the VW electric race car, following previous record-setting runs at Pikes Peak and the Nürburgring-Nordschleife. These high-profile wins strategically build excitement and credibility for Volkswagen’s broader electric ambitions. The automaker plans to launch more than 20 fully electric models and aims to sell 1 million electric vehicles annually by 2025.